JDE mode not fontifying correctly; syntax table problems? (21.5.11)

Is anyone else noticing that JDE mode has started behaving strangely? First there was the infinite lazy-lock fontifying hang I submitted a patch for (http://list-archive.xemacs.org/xemacs-patches/200304/msg00057.html), which puzzles me because that code doesn't seem to have changed in some time and so should have exhibited similar behavior for many previous versions. Now it is not handling comments properly, neither fontifying them as comments nor treating them as such for indentation purposes. I thought maybe it had to do with the syntax table. jde-mode-syntax-table is simply #(char-table type syntax data (?_ 2)) while java-mode-syntax-table is much richer, and does the right thing. If I (setq jde-mode-syntax-table java-mode-syntax-table), everything is much happier. I think something is wrong with jde-mode's derivation from java-mode. I can start taking a look into this, but I don't have much time right now and it will involve much learning on my part to understand what's going on, so I'm asking in hopes that someone here already understands this code and can quickly understand what is happening.... -Jin